TransAmman87

I just recently have logged on to search the forums because I was looking for suggestions for front suspension ideas. I was very very confused by the new search forum layout. It doesn't seem to make any sense to me because irrelavent items were being brought up that have little or nothing to do with front suspensions or the topics that I want to research. I even tried to sort according to the specific forum but still had no luck. Is there any way that we can go back to having the old search forum layout?

I don't know if anyone else has had any problems like I have; if so let me know so I don't feel bad lol. I hope that I am not sounding crazy here.


-Craig

JT

iTrader: (1)

In order to help, please provide specific examples. Please state the search terms you were using, how you entered them into the search/keyword fields, what you were expecting for results, why some results were not as expected, etc.

Also explain how irrelevant items were at the top. By default, the results are listed by a relevancy system that takes into account several factors. The search returns results based on the search terms you provided. It should not be including results that are "irrelevant", but instead they matched your search terms. If the results are shown, it's because it matched keywords you specifically entered. If you're speaking simply about result *orders*, as you know, it can be sorted based on date, relevance, etc.

The old search will not be coming back, especially with a lack of strong reasoning to do so. This new search engine is still beta, and is in continued development. There really is no strong reason to bring back a search engine that was inefficient and more restrictive. There may be some glitches here and there with this beta search, and some options may not be fully utilized yet, but by large the results have been positive. You will also likely to find this new search engine being used more widely at some point.

The new search will continue to be improved on, especially with constructive input by members who use the search.

The_Beast

I'm with TransAmMan on this one. This new search is highly confusing. The old search engine gave you plenty of options to aid your search. Specifically, the choice to "search entire posts" or "search titles only" was massively helpful.
Once the search came up, you had a very organized list of posts that was easy to browse through and the main thing I looked at on these lists (besides the very apparent post date) was the number of replies to the post. It doesn't seem like the new search gives much information about each thread, especially with the lack of the number of replies. To me, it just seems like the new search throws out a "take it or leave it" style interface with not much to go on. If we do have to stick with this new engine, I at least hope my post helps with the available options in the next version .

JT

iTrader: (1)

Besides search by title feature not being presented with the new search engine (but it does function), what else makes you state that the old search had "plenty" of options over the new search engine? The new search engine has plenty of those same options, to my memory. If not, please describe.

The ability to search by title is there. To be honest, it is not a very popular search method on this website. We understand there are some who did use it. You can manually search by title by adding the prefix title: to your search phrase.

The new search engine is still being treated with updates, especially with constructive feedback from members. At some point, we do have plans to have some sort of "tips" posted and made available to help make searching easier and more understood.

The_Beast

I don't really remember all the options that were available. I just remember a number of drop down boxes in the advanced search options window including the "search posts or titles" one that I mainly used. Although, I didn't know about the manual prefix method. That will certainly help matters.



Yea, that would definitely help with this new engine. It is just going to take some time to get used to. My main concern with it isn't so much the available options, as it is the interface that is produced from the search. The worst was when I left all the options alone (default: sort by relevance) and searched. The results were output as single posts, which was absolutely annoying because the first page could consist entirely of posts from the same thread.
The results with the new engine just don't seem as organized or as visually easy on the eyes as the old results were (although, this may just be my graphic design background speaking ). That lack of a "number of replies" column also seems to hurt the organization of it all.
Hey Craig, were any of these things part of your confusion or is it just me?

TransAmman87

Actually, my biggest problem after trying to adapt to the new search forum is the layout of it. It seems too busy and cluttered compared to the old version. It also is taking more time to use because the topics that come up jump to a particular post for a topic reply and not to the beginners post. For example, I was searching for information regarding 'Best Koni Shocks' and saw a post that had a 84% relavancy. I clicked on it thinking that it would take me to the original problem or question from a user but instead it took me to a members posting in regard to the original topic where the word "Koni" was used multiple times in the members reply. I had to scroll up to the top to find the original posters post and found out that the person did not have a similar problem or question like mine. I know that is going to happen, but I had to search the entire post to figure that out. I kept searching and eventually found something but the relevancy was I think 5% relevancy. Is this something that can be corrected with on going development?

84redta

iTrader: (34)

Yea i've had these same issues, is there a way to bump you to the top and just have the words you searched highlighted so that by the time you get down to the bottom where they were mentioned you can pick them out easily?